


Simon Versus Mister Dick

by runrarebit



Series: Misfits Moments [17]
Category: Misfits (TV 2009)
Genre: AU, Alternate Timeline, Angst, Bottom!Nathan, Dark!Simon, M/M, Mind Control, Misery, a bit of Nathan having an unhealthy relationship to sex, denial of autonomy, evil tattoos, mention of that piss enema thing again, mention of watersports, some mention of murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 04:16:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18843463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runrarebit/pseuds/runrarebit
Summary: Well, well, well- Here we have the notorious tattoo episode- s02e03- in my AU. Also,Alisha Versus Rubber Sheets and Rose Petalshappens during this fic.





	Simon Versus Mister Dick

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: For Simon reflecting on killing both Lucy and Sally and kind of being murderous. The piss enema thing comes up again. Also there's some- not quite sure how to put it. Nathan using sex in an unhealthy way to try and feel like he's forgiven.
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading my fics! Hope you're all having a lovely day!

Sometime while he is busy trying to work out how to pick up the bottom half of a shop mannequin without inadvertently sexually molesting it Nathan volunteers the both of them to go with Kelly to get her tattoo touched up. He is told this when Nathan comes slinking over shortly afterwards to lay a beer-scented kiss on his neck, holding out the can in case he wants any. ‘I found it in the fridge over there,’ his boyfriend says, with a shrug in Kelly’s direction, and then, whispered, ‘I’m still wet, if you get sick of fingering shop dummies.’

He shudders, cock swelling, the memory crossing his mind of waking up on the mattress at the Community Centre in the early hours to Nathan tugging at him until he rolled onto the other man, a lube slick hand pumping at his cock while he was still half asleep, his boyfriend then guiding it until it caught and then arching his hips up as he’d instinctively thrust forward, his mind only really coming online once he was buried to the hilt in Nathan’s arse. It had been quick and rough and lovely, under the covers and over in minutes, the two of them lying there, him still embedded, until they’d fallen back to sleep and been woken later to the sound of the alarm on his phone going off.

Nathan gives him a hand as he hobbles over to the skip with the half a mannequin, doing his best to hide the bulge in the front of his trousers from the world at large. He’s almost gotten used to being constantly at least half-hard and almost ready to go back at the Community Centre, but it feels like something else, more _exposed_ to do it out here, where anyone passing could see. The Community Centre almost feels like a second home now, he’s spent so much time there recently.

Once the dummy is in the bin Nathan pulls him into a quick kiss full of rather a lot of tongue, before shouting at Kelly whether she wants any of the beer. It’s after she’s responded with ‘Nah mate— no offence, but I know where your mouth’s been,’ and Nathan’s bellowed back something about her missing out, and him having the best tasting cock Nathan’s ever had in his mouth, and that he’d say she should have a go but if she even thinks about it he will— _do something_ — mate or not. By the end of it he’s wishing he could sink into the ground. 

He— well, he’s coming to the rather alarming conclusion that he might just be in full blown _love_ with Nathan, but the other man can still be a horribly embarrassing little twat. 

It’s after that, as Nathan’s skipping back over to help Kelly with a beer fridge, that the other man bellows at him that they’re going with her for the tattoo thing before they drop in to see how Jamie’s going at the hospital. 

He’s doing well, Jamie. He’ll be permanently scarred from the burns to both arms and a bit of his torso, and there’s the places where he got struck by shrapnel, but the man’s recovering well, will probably be discharged in a say or so, and is in good spirits— it might help that he’s been talking to the girl he was trying to save from the car, Lily, and the two of them have really hit it off. She’s still in the hospital too— same reason, though she’s burnt a bit worse and most of them are to the bottom part of her body.

Once they learnt about her power he decided it was best to tell her about what would happen if she takes E, Nathan leaving it up to him to explain it as simply and calmly as he could while his boyfriend broke the news about his own immortality to Jamie. He’d seen it then, in Jamie’s eyes, that look that says, “Why were you keeping my brother’s corpse in a chest freezer?” but he can’t explain it. The devastation when Nathan had died, right in front of him.

He’s never felt like that before. 

He never wants to feel like that again.

The thought of Nathan being hurt, being taken from him— it’s like this monster rises from the back of his mind. A monster worse than the ones he already knew were there. 

He’d strangled Lucy with his bare hands, her reverting from Kelly to her own form partway through. He doesn’t like to think about it too much— the details, the way she’d died, how it had felt. There had been no satisfaction there. He didn’t enjoy her death. It just simply felt like something he had to do— like there was no moment past that moment, no history, no timeline, no universe, in which he did not kill her. It was inevitable. It was different than with Sally, but at the same time the same. 

Sally he didn’t mean to kill, he just accidentally brought about her death, but Lucy— he scares himself now, more than he ever has in the past. The worst is the absence of guilt. He keeps waiting to feel it. He _wants_ to feel it. It never comes. Even though he knew her— it might as well be the same as dumping the shop mannequin in the skip. A disposal.

Aside from whatever Jamie might think he did to Nathan when Nathan was dead— nothing, other than bathe him almost ceremonially, dress him in something that looked comfortable, then gently deposit him in the freezer, curling him up on his side so he’d looked like he was comfortable, sleeping— if it wasn’t for the smell. The pipe having punctured his guts. 

He’d tried to leave him alone, to not go in and look and give focus to the wrenching terror of his grief, the sense that something precious, special, something he could never find again was gone and lost and with it _him._ He didn’t sleep. He couldn’t go home— he’d just pace the halls of the Community Centre, feeling like he was going mad. He’s not sure what he would have done, eventually, if his grief hadn’t driven him to look once more on what he’d lost— at which point Nathan had woken up. A miracle. _His_ miracle.

Aside from that, the idea flitting through Jamie’s head— and he knows probably the others’— that he might have _interfered_ with Nathan’s corpse, he’s getting on alright with Nathan’s brother. Not great, because he and Jamie are two very different people— and, ok, he and _Nathan_ are two very different people, but he’s not in love with Jamie, he doesn’t want to _fuck_ Jamie, he’d never _kill_ for Jamie— but well enough to make Nathan happy. That’s a thing they seem to have in common. A desire to make Nathan happy. 

His relationship with Mike might be a bit more frosty, but that might be less to do with him being the man’s son’s boyfriend, and more about the fact Nathan is having trouble with Jamie’s wish that they all try to get along better. And when Nathan gets wound up and vicious and he and his father get into it, _he’s_ the one who sees Nathan sometimes trying not to cry afterwards, he’s the one into whose arms Nathan crawls, he’s the one who does his best to comfort his boyfriend— even if the only comfort he can give is to fuck Nathan until the man can’t think straight— and all of it makes him wonder if there’s more to it. More to Nathan’s misery and anger and grief than what seems on the surface.

So he’s perfectly happy to go visit Jamie later. He doesn’t even mind the tattoo thing, even though he hates needles— because he’s curious. He’s never been brave enough to set foot inside a tattoo parlour before— not that he’s ever wanted one—his mind goes to Nathan’s tattoos, the way the man squeaks when he presses kisses to the ones on his hip, the empty star on his arm near his wrist, the others— but he can see part of the appeal. Ornamenting the already ornamental. 

His mind starts wandering again, imagining getting Nathan naked— touching those tattoos on his hips, using fingers, lips, tongue, cock, spunk, piss to mark—

‘That guy in the mask has been following me around again,’ Alisha says, dragging his attention over to her. She’s not, strictly speaking, telling him that, but he seems included in the group. ‘Have any of you seen him?’

Curtis hasn’t, Nathan hasn’t, Kelly hasn’t, and then she turns to him, an uncomfortable grimace on her face. He feels his face burn. ‘How about you? You seen him?’ He hasn’t.

She looks at him for a moment longer, her nose wrinkling up, before she trots back over to Curtis so they can chat while they’re working. At the end of last week the others had walked in on him and Nathan when they’d been— 

He doesn’t think it would help any if he told everyone it was Nathan’s idea— to start with he wouldn’t say that, expose his boyfriend like that, but he also doubts they’d believe him. It _had_ been Nathan’s idea— or, at least, Nathan’s constant nagging about what was the filthiest porn he’d wanked to in the week before that night they went out for drinks, and his eventual, humiliated, capitulation to let Nathan see it— that blonde woman having her arse pissed up— and then Nathan wanted them to try it out for themselves. 

Why though? It doesn’t seem like the sort of thing a boyfriend should be alright with, should be accepting of, should even _agree_ to try, let alone suggest they— it’s like when Nathan suggested he piss on him. He’d never, ever, _ever_ really thought that if he had a girlfriend (or a boyfriend, as he’s come to learn) they’d be ok with some of his kinks, let alone want to play along. He’d thought he’d have to hide them— actually, there has been more than once when the thought of having to hide them had seemed like a good thing, like maybe not being able to indulge them whenever he wanted for a while might make him lose interest in them. Only now he has a boyfriend who will let him try pissing up his arse. 

It doesn’t seem real. 

He’s not sure he wants to try it again though. He had managed to— _you know_ , only it was like with Matt’s letterbox and his mum, he’d just gotten started when suddenly there were less than impressed witnesses and at that point he’d wanted to stop, but he couldn’t. At least this time he’d had Nathan to wrap his arms around his head and coo in his ear that it was ok when he’d started panicking. Still— not an arousing experience. 

Nathan is truly, exceptionally good to him. Not at all like what he would have thought the other man would be like as a boyfriend— if he’d ever thought about it at all, before he was suddenly caught up in the midst of it. 

Suddenly he wants to kiss the other man, but Nathan’s out of reach and helping Kelly while telling some story that’s making her laugh so hard neither of them can keep a grip on the doorless fridge they’re trying to lift into the skip. Fondness wells up in him before he goes over to give them a hand. 

The tattoo parlour is— he’s not sure what he expected. But it’s weird. Dark. Pretentious. Deserted.

He and Nathan are gawping at a picture of a cock with a barbed-wire tattoo wrapped around it when Kelly calls out and tells him he should get one— a tattoo that is, he suspects, not a barbed wire wrapped cock. He tells her he’s afraid of needles, which makes Nathan sigh and say, ‘That’s a pity. I can see you with something like this, but instead of the wanky barbed wire, we could have _Property of Nathan Young_ written across it,’ at that Nathan reaches down and gives him a little squeeze. He yelps, even as his hips dance into the pressure and his cock twitches. 

‘I—I don’t think—’ he begins, not sure quite how to say that it’s not so much the idea of Nathan’s name on him as the idea of the needles stabbing him in the cock that makes him really not like that idea. Also, if Nathan ever gets sick of him— that dark monster in the back of his mind stirring at the thought— it would be hard going through life with the man’s name tattooed on his body.

‘I’m not serious Barry,’ Nathan says, softly, leaning down and resting his head for a moment on his shoulder, ‘I’d never make you do something you don’t want to do,’ then a kiss to his cheek and the Irishman is turning to the tattoo artist to ask him whose cock it is.

Apparently it’s the tattoo artist’s. He drifts away while Nathan is being all _Nathan_ about it, looking at the pictures on the walls, the snake in the tube. He wonders if Nathan will let him watch the next time his boyfriend gets a tattoo— the thought of seeing those little needles piercing Nathan’s flesh, again and again, making him feel— weird. It’s not the same as the idea of them piercing his own. 

There’s this terrible moment where he wonders if he could convince Nathan to get _his_ name tattooed somewhere on that beautiful body— the thought sends a thrill of excitement through him, and then guilt because he’d never return the favour. 

‘How about a tramp stamp?’ Nathan is suddenly saying, slinking over to him and examining some pictures up on a board of what must be work this Vince has done on clients instead of himself, ‘I could get _Simon_ done right across here—’ Nathan turns away from him to pull up his jacket and shirt, brushing those long fingers across the curve of that lovely lower back, before leaning in to say, softly, ‘—I bet you’d like spunking all over that, wouldn’t you? Or maybe I could get it done somewhere— lower.’

His own hands go out, fingers singing greedily into the exposed flesh at the top of hips, across belly, lower back, imagining the word there— his name. _His._ His cock starts to swell to full hardness, his body swaying in, leaning in to breathe Nathan’s breath into his lungs, his lips stealing a kiss, tongue flicking out across that plush—

‘You two better not be thinking of shagging in here,’ Kelly snaps, breaking the spell, ‘It’s a tattoo parlour, you’ve got to keep everything hygienic— Sorry about them Vince, you can’t take them anywhere.’

He glances back to see the tattoo artist looking at them with disgust. Something uncomfortable curls in his belly, something dark in the back of his mind. ‘Maybe something like this—’ is what Nathan’s saying, pointing to one of the pictures on the board, a woman’s lower back with the name “Vince” scrawled on it in huge, bulky letters, ‘—only less ugly and shit looking.’

‘That’s my ex-girlfriend,’ the tattoo artist snarls.

‘Is it?’ Nathan asks, ‘Really? And you wonder why she left you? I’d leave you too if you gave me such a hideous tattoo—’ his boyfriend must realise that he’s being a prick, because Nathan then quickly says, ‘Sorry man, that must suck. No offense and all, to each their own— I’m sure it’s a lovely tattoo, if you like that ugly looking art style—’

‘None taken,’ the tattoo artist grits out, hand clenched tight to his tattoo gun. Nathan suddenly hisses, beside him, a hand going to his shoulder. 

‘You alright?’ he asks, reaching for his boyfriend, but Nathan waves him off and wanders over to see Kelly have her tattoo finished off. 

It’s only as they’re leaving that he realises something is wrong. Nathan asks his whether he wants to go get a drink, or at least he thinks that’s what the other is asking, but when he asks where Nathan would like to go and shouldn’t they go see Jamie first his boyfriend says ‘I wasn’t talking to you, you little freak. So, what do you think Kelly?’

It’s like the world drops out beneath him. Things actually go dark at the edges for a moment, black spots sparking across his vision. ‘What—?’ he mumbles out, instinctively reaching for a Nathan that dodges his touch. 

‘Fuck off you pervert!’ the other man snaps, slapping at him hard, so it stings.

From somewhere very, very far away he can hear Kelly hopping into Nathan, and then see Nathan flouncing off to go drink by himself, but he’s mainly occupied in sinking down into a squat, his bag dropping from suddenly nerveless fingers. ‘Simon! Simon! _Simon!_ ’ he looks up, Kelly is standing over him. ‘I don’t know what he’s playing at but I’m sure he’ll be over it by the morning. He’s dead keen on you, thinks about you all the time— he’s probably just in some kind of mood. You know what he’s like—’

‘He called me a freak and a pervert and told me to fuck off,’ he tells her, because that’s all he’s capable of thinking. 

‘Well, yes,’ she says, ‘But he’s done that loads of times in the past and he got over it.’

‘But he hasn’t called me any of those things since we got together.’

A little wrinkle appears between her brow, ‘What? Not even _pervert_?’

‘No!’ he snaps, not even about the pissing thing, not even when he’d said he wanted to eat his own spunk from Nathan’s arse, not even when he wanted to use the good camera on his still new phone to—

‘Ok, ok, that’s enough. I get it. I don’t need to hear you thinking any more of that,’ she says. ‘Hows about you and me go and get a drink, then we can both go ‘round the Community Centre and see if he’s managed to untwist his knickers, sound like a deal?’

‘O-ok,’ he says.

After a moment she sighs, irritated, and reached down to drag him to his feet. ‘Come on, yeah?’

They have a drink at the bar on the estate. He can barely bring himself to sip it, mind buzzing. Why? Why? Why? Why is Nathan being like that? What has he done wrong? Is it because of Lucy? Sally? Has what he is finally sunken in? A murderer. A monster. Is this it, them over already? 

He feels sick. 

After the drink they go back to the Community Centre but no one’s there, the lights are all off, and he doesn’t have a key— ‘Jamie!’ he says, looking over at her desperately. ‘Maybe he’s gone to visit his brother.’

When they get to the hospital Jamie says they just missed him, that he left about ten minutes ago. They turn to go immediately— ‘Everything alright?’ the man calls out, before they can leave. ‘I mean, between you two? He seemed— I dunno. Off. He didn’t mention you even once.’

He shakes his head, shrugs helplessly. ‘I don’t know.’

The other man’s face cracks into a harsh frown. ‘You didn’t do anything to hurt him, did you? Because if you did—’

‘He didn’t do nothing!’ Kelly snaps. ‘Nathan’s being dead weird. We’re worried about him and all—’

Jamie agrees to call him if Nathan shows up again. They go back to the Community Centre, him hoping Nathan will be there, all open arms and soft touches and whispered apologies for making him worry. It’s still dark, still empty, still no sign of his boyfriend. He finds himself leaning his face against the locked doors. He’s shivering, trembling, all his muscles locked up. He’s not sure if he’s crying. His face feels dry but his eyes feel wide and stinging and— ‘Ok mate, you need another drink.’

She takes him back to the bar, where he drinks until he can’t even walk straight, until he’s as drunk, if not drunker, than Nathan was that night. Kelly has to help him home, holding him up as he rests against her, mumbling in her ear a constant drone of how wonderful Nathan is and how much he doesn’t think he can live without him. ‘There, there mate,’ she says every now and then. ‘He can’t have dumped ya, I don’t believe it. We’ll work it all out in the morning.’

It’s worse in the morning. Nathan is like his old self— no, that’s not true. It’s not just that Nathan’s mean, cruel, mocking, but the other man’s also entirely too content to ignore him as if he’s not there. And Nathan calls him “Simon,” not a single “Barry” slipping from between the other’s lips the entire time. It makes him hate his own name, the sound of it. He feels like crying, or screaming, or possibly ringing his mother up at work and having the argument she’d tried to start first thing about him coming home drunk and leaning on a very disreputable looking girl. 

It’s horrible eating lunch alone. By now he’s become so used to Nathan pressing up against him, the warmth of the other man’s body, the chatter and the praises and the little moments of affection— they usually shag after lunch too, before they get back to community service. He finds his cock swelling, miserable, pointless, Pavlov’s dog responding to a stimulus that isn’t coming today. 

The only person he sees as he’s eating his sandwich is Alisha, who gives him an even funnier look than usual, before shaking her head and going off to wherever it is she’s going. 

He doesn’t mean to, not with the way Nathan is treating him, but he still catches himself sneaking glimpses of the other man’s body as he changes at the end of the day. Usually they’d be chattering about what they’re having for dinner, stealing the occasional grope, maybe a kiss, Nathan teasing him with how much the Irishman wants his cock— his eye catches on [his boyfriend’s?] Nathan’s shoulder—

A tattoo. New. A heart, broken in two. _Si_ on one side _mon_ on the other. What?

‘Nathan—’ he calls out, grabbing for the Irishman, trying to turn that lovely body to get a better look. 

‘Stop trying to fucking _touch me!_ ’ his boyfriend snaps, ‘You’re such a fucking freak. Do I look like a gay to you?’

‘Where did you get that tattoo?’ he says, still trying to grab his boyfriend. ‘It looks new, did you go back to the tattoo place?’

‘ _Just leave me the fuck alone!_ ’ Nathan snarls, pulling away to grab his stuff and flounce off. 

‘Nathan!’ he calls after his boyfriend. ‘Nathan, come back here!’

‘You go after him mate,’ Kelly says, quickly buttoning up her top. ‘Try and keep him contained, yeah? I’m going round that Vince’s; see if he knows what’s going on.’

‘Ok,’ he says, smoothing down his fringe and grabbing his bag. ‘Ok. You sure you don’t want me to come with you?’

She shakes her head, ‘If he’s acting like that to you who knows what he might get up to. He’s not himself.’

He wants to argue, to tell her that he really is coming with her, that it would be best if they sticked together to work out what’s gone wrong— but a little voice keeps insisting that whatever she’s thinking she’s wrong. That Nathan isn’t acting like this because he’s being mind-controlled, but because the man’s woken up and realised what he was doing— attaching himself to a man like Simon. 

He scurries after Nathan, thinking that maybe if he catches the Irishman, gets him somewhere safe— maybe Alisha and Curtis could supervise him, if either of them would deign to answer his call— then he can join her at the tattoo parlour. Except he can’t find Nathan. He looks everywhere— outside the Community Centre, inside the Community Centre, on the roof— and no matter how many times he rings Nathan the man won’t pick up. 

He rings Kelly after a couple of hours to ask if she found anything at the tattoo parlour, but all she can say is, ‘Sorry mate, Vince had nothing to do with it,’ so he goes home.

It’s horrible being back home. It shouldn’t be, he’s with his family— well, other than his dad, who’s back in Stockholm— but his mum and his sister are there, and they look at him with surprise when he comes in and sits at the table for dinner. He can tell by the twitching in his mum’s jaw that she’d like to bring up Kelly, what he’s been up to, why he’s never home, whether or not the degenerates he’s doing community service with are leading him astray— but thankfully she abstains in front of his sister. He picks sat his food. Goes up to bed as soon as he can. 

He can’t sleep.

He ends up looking back over old photos, old footage, Nathan before and after they started going together— Nathan at his prickish best, calling him pervert, melonfucker— Nathan naked, a couple of fingers up his own arse, everything slick with _his_ cum. 

Sometime around two in the morning he drags himself from his room and downstairs, grabbing a bottle of red wine from the cupboard where his mum keeps them for guests. He can’t bring himself to go upstairs. Can’t bring himself to stay a moment longer in this house— 

He ends up pacing back and forth on the street in front of the house, draining the bottle in long, wretched pulls. He can’t even recognise all the emotions welling up inside of him, but they make him sick, miserable. He wants Nathan. He wants his boyfriend. He wants to be wrapped in those long arms, curled up on that horrible little mattress in the Community Centre. 

He’s almost finished the bottle when a light goes on next door and he ends up seeing Matt’s stupid face peering down at him from the other man’s bedroom window, hair all mussed. For a moment he’s tempted to lob the bottle at the man— he doubts he’d even hit the window, let alone smash it and smack Matt in the face, but maybe it would make the blond look at him with fear— just for a moment. Instead he sticks his fingers up at his ex-friend and goes back in the house for another bottle of red— this one he drinks sitting up in is bed, trying not to cry, until he eventually falls asleep. 

The next day he walks —massively hungover and with a head that _throbs_ — into the bathrooms at the Community Centre to see Kelly half-naked, a tattoo on her shoulder like a version of Nathan’s that hasn’t been broken in two. _Vince,_ it says. Then she opens her mouth and starts acting like an idiot over the man. 

The monster in the back of his mind sits up as rage descends over him. 

Nathan comes in while he’s sitting on the bench, head in his hands, trying to convince himself that storming into that tattoo artist’s shop and beating the man into a quivering lump is not going to fix anything. By the time he’s dragged himself upright the two of them are comparing tattoos in the mirror. He tries to point out that the tattoos are controlling them, but between Nathan being a massive prick to him and Kelly insisting Vince loves her too much to do any such thing it’s pretty hopeless.

He is _furious,_ he just wants to shake the two of them— but it’s not their fault. It’s not their fault. It’s not _Nathan’s_ fault. Nathan _didn’t dump him._

In the end he has to go and get Alisha and Curtis, because it feels like he needs help before he does something stupid. Sensible help— which he thinks Curtis is— and, while he’s not quite so sure about Alisha, he knows she’s Kelly’s friend and that this will probably piss her off. 

Angry as he is, he tries to have some consideration for them— so he doesn’t just go barging into the storage room that he can hear their soft moaning coming from, but he does bang roughly on the roller door and bellow, ‘Curtis, Alisha, are you two in there?’ just to be sure it’s not the probation worker wanking or something.

‘Fuck off pervert!’ Alisha yelps back.

‘I need your help,’ he shouts back.

‘What ya doing man? We leave you and Nathan alone when the two of you are—’ Curtis begins, before he interrupts the other man.

‘Kelly and Nathan are being mind-controlled by a tattoo artist and we need to go and do something about it.’

‘Why do you need us?’ Alisha asks, ‘Why don’t you three deal with it?’

‘Because he’s made Kelly in love with him—’ he starts, before he finds his voice trembling, the words hard to grit out, ‘—and he’s m-made Nathan _h-h-hate_ me—’ instinctively he gasps in a breath, forcing it out with a shaky inhale, ‘—so they’re not being v-very helpful.’

There’s a pause, then Curtis says, ‘Shit man. Yeah, give us a moment and we’ll be right out.’

There’s a moment of urgent, whispered conversation, then Alisha says, low and urgent and obviously not to him, ‘I get it, I do. It’s just— I was about to—’

‘We’ll get back to it later,’ Curtis says promises, voice affectionate. ‘I promise I’m not going to leave you wanting—’

‘Meet me outside,’ he calls to them, ‘I’ll go and try to deal with the others.’

‘Ok, man.’

Getting them to change back into their street wear is hard enough, but then they start milling around the moment they get outside, Nathan trying to stay as far away from him as possible, Kelly going on about how she doesn’t think Vince did it, Alisha just looking at the two of them with her brow raised and a tiny smirk around the edge of her lips— at least Curtis is useful, suggesting to Kelly that maybe they should all go around so she can introduce her friends to her new boyfriend—

‘Oi,’ is how she responds, except she’s not looking at Curtis, and then, ‘Alisha, is that the guy?’

She looks up, her face wrinkling up in disgust. ‘Yeah, that’s him alright.’

‘What does he want?’ Kelly asks.

He could swear he hears Alisha mutter something like, ‘Probably to piss on one of us,’ but before he can try and untangle that Nathan’s calling up to the man, a frown on his pretty face. 

‘You alright there, you wanker?’

The man’s hand moves to his waist, Nathan shouts about him having a gun, and in the resulting confusion he finds himself reaching for his boyfriend, instinctively trying to shield the man from whatever the man in the mask is doing. On one level he knows that Nathan is immortal, but at the same time— he’s not sure he can survive seeing Nathan hurt again, dead again. ‘Get the fuck off me, Simon,’ Nathan snaps, pushing at him, just as a little parcel lands in front of them all.

He goes with the momentum, leaning down and scooping up the bag of— peanuts? Something niggles at the back of his mind. 

They go to the tattoo parlour. As they step inside his eyes go to the _nut allergy_ signs on the walls. Oh. But how, _why?_ How did the man in the mask know about this, and why did he then give them the peanuts? It’s— worrying. All this he thinks with one part of his mind— the rest is consumed with rage the moment he sees Vince.

‘We know about the tattoos,’ he snaps, stepping forward, head up, eyes fixed on his enemy. ’Remove them!’ 

‘He didn’t do it!’ Kelly argues.

Curtis pipes up, trying to help, but Vince just laughs at them, ‘Or what?’

‘I’ll hurt you,’ he finds himself saying, ignoring Kelly rushing to Vince’s defence and going to stand next to the man.

‘Yeah?’ Vince laughs. ‘You? What are you going to do little boy?’

‘I wouldn’t laugh like that if I was you,’ Alisha says. ‘You do not know what he is capable of. Come on, do us a favour, yeah? I don’t want to be here, you don’t want to be here, just get rid of those stupid tattoos and we’ll all pretend nothing happened.’

‘You didn’t tell me you had such a beautiful friend,’ Vince says to Kelly, eyeing up Alisha. 

He sees Alisha’s face curl up in disgust, sees her back away a little, Curtis immediately stepping in front of her, snarling for Vince to ‘Lose the tattoos!’

The tattoo artist points his tattoo gun at Curtis, a weird, high-pitched sound ringing out, and then the dark-skinned man is grabbing at his stomach, hunching over, lifting his top to show the image of a knife stabbing itself into his guts. ‘You stabbed me!’

‘Curtis!’ Alisha screams, as blood wells from the man’s lips and he starts to collapse. She darts forward to catch him before pulling herself back, ‘I can’t even touch you,’ she mewls, fluttering around her boyfriend as Nathan catches him and helps him down to the ground. ‘I can’t even touch you.’

“Lisha—’ Curtis breathes, spitting blood. 

‘Don’t just stand there!’ Alisha screams. ‘Help him!’

He can hear Vince saying something about Kelly staying while the rest of them leave, but his attention is back on the _nut allergy_ sign. For a moment he wishes he hadn’t brought the others, that there was some way he could have done this just by becoming invisible and _making_ Vince do what he wanted, but he suspects— based on what he saw when the man used his power to stab Curtis— that Vince might have to be able to _see_ his victims to use his power on them. He turns his attention to his enemy, making it clear that if Vince doesn’t remove the tattoos he’ll open the peanuts.

Vince tries to bargain, then Vince threatens Kelly, and then Alisha is shouting and Nathan is whining in confusion, and Vince is still threatening Kelly, and he is still demanding Vince let her go and remove the tattoos— and somewhere in the middle of it all he rips open the bag and throws its contents at the man.

He’s not sure what he expected to happen. It probably wasn’t for Vince to release Kelly but for the nuts to just bounce off the man. Then— around his throat. Something had and cold and sharp, digging in, cutting in, cutting off his air. His hands go up, scrabbling at his skin, nothing to feel, nothing to grab at— he falls down, the world going bleary around him, the sight of Nathan standing over him, looking down at him, _impassive_ — he lands hard, on his side. 

A peanut.

He reaches for it, feels it caught between fingertips, and, half-blind— he flicks it into Vince’s open mouth. In the confusion of the following moments he gets a hold of the man’s epi-pen, gets Vince to remove the tattoos, sucking in deep breaths of air, and then gets to his feet, preparing to inject Vince and— he hesitates, the plastic cylinder heavy in his hand. Vince is in front of him, wheezing, coughing, choking— it would be so easy to just _not._

The man tried to take Nathan from him. The man _succeeded_ in taking Nathan from him. The monster roars inside of him. 

‘Oh for fuck’s sake,’ he hears, then the cylinder is snatched from his grip and Kelly is roughly injecting it into the tattoo artist’s chest. She gives him a _look,_ ‘No more murder, yeah?’ before rounding on the tattoo artist and saying ‘You want to spunk all over a girl’s tattoos, just ask them, yeah?’ and giving him a solid kick in the ribs.

‘Curtis, oh my God, Curtis, you’re alright,’ he hears Alisha whimpering in the background.

Then he hears Nathan’s voice, tiny, almost mewling, ‘Barry?’ and the moment he turns around he sees his boyfriend staring at him with big eyes, panic suffusing every feature. Then Nathan is rushing forward, but not into his arms, instead the man is giving Vince his own kicking, even more vicious than Kelly. ‘You fucking bastard!’ his boyfriend is snarling. ‘How fucking _dare_ you make me— fuck you! Fuck you! I fucking hate—!’

He steps forward, hands reaching out, feels one close over Nathan’s bony little wrist. The moment they touch his boyfriend whirls around and flings himself at him, hunching down and curling in close. ‘Barry, Barry, Barry,’ the Irishman mewls against his neck. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.’

‘Not your fault,’ he whimpers back, wrapping his arms around Nathan and holding him close. 

Later, once they’re back up in Nathan’s nest at the Community Centre— Nathan having refused to let go of him for the entire journey back, the other man very quiet, very subdued, that pretty face almost always facing the ground— Nathan tells him that after seeing Jamie he went out drinking that first night, that he let a girl kiss him— 

He feels every muscle in his body tense up. The thought of someone else touching Nathan, those soft, full lips against another’s, a stranger’s hands cupping the sides of that pretty face, fingers tangling in those silky curls— He feels sick. Hot. Cold. _Furious._ He wonders what she looks like, this person that has touched what is his, he wonders if she’s pretty— he wonders if Nathan liked the way she tasted—

And as the jealousy rises and roars the other man rushes to say that he hadn’t liked it, that even with the tattoo it had felt wrong— so he’d ended up going around to his mum’s, but she wasn’t there, so he’d slept the night in her garden shed before going back to the Community Centre— ‘It was only a kiss, that’s all it was. I didn’t cheat on you. I promise I didn’t cheat on you.’

‘What about the second night?’ he finds himself asking, which is not what he wants to do. He wants to comfort his boyfriend, he can see how miserable and frantic Nathan is— but, _jealousy._ Did Nathan let anyone else touch him? See him? _Fuck_ him?

‘I went to see dad,’ is what Nathan answers, a brittle sneer twisting his lips. So, probably not lying. That’s a look he gets sometimes, and only when talking about an interaction with Mike. ‘We had this huge fight— then I came back here, broke into the kitchen, drank myself to sleep.’ A shrug, ‘I woke up at like five, lying on the floor. Threw up on myself. Had a shower. Fell back asleep up here.’

There is a brief pause, and then ‘I really didn’t cheat on you,’ Nathan says, looking a little teary around the edges. ‘You can check if you like, I’ve started to tighten back up— haven’t had anything up there in days.’

He takes a deep breath, thinks it through. If Nathan had he’d either admit it or be more aggressive, he thinks, giddily blasé about it, not this quiet distress— ‘I don’t think you cheated on me,’ he says this time, ‘And even if you did— it wouldn’t be your fault.’ It really wouldn’t be, he reminds himself, Nathan was being controlled. His mind interfered with. Anyway, he’s pretty sure Nathan is telling the truth. No he _is_ sure— Whatever the case it was obviously the wrong thing to say. He can see the panic build in his boyfriend, Nathan actually starting to tremble in front of him. 

‘But I didn’t!’ Nathan snaps, grabbing at his hand and trying to drag it around to the other man’s arse. ‘Come on, check.’

It’s hard, but somehow he manages to break the other man’s grip, ‘I don’t need to _check._ I believe you.’ 

‘But!’ Nathan protests, chest rising and falling so quickly, body trembling. 

Fuck, he’s fucked this up so badly. He never wanted to hurt the other man, no matter what had happened. ‘Nathan, I _believe you._ ’ 

He’s not sure Nathan believes that he believes him, but it quietens the man enough that he can pull him into his arms, just holding him for a moment, leaning in and burying his face into those curls, breathing deep. 

After a moment Nathan pushes at him, making him pull back so the Irishman can take his lips in a kiss. He feels that tongue lap against his lips, before he parts them, lets it slip inside, chasing it with his own. They kiss for a while, Nathan’s hands almost clawing into his shoulders, his own roaming up and down the other’s back, rubbing the cloth of his t-shirt against his skin, before slipping underneath, touching soft skin. 

‘What do you want to do?’ Nathan asks when they eventually pull back a little, breathing the same air, his eyes caught on that lovely, full mouth. ‘Do you want me to ride you? Or you can fuck my throat? Or do you want to strangle me? I don’t mind. Anything you—’

He pulls back further, letting himself take in the whole picture. Nathan looks miserable. His eyes are red-rimmed, watery, his blush blotchy and different that the usual one when they’re doing this, his breathing uneven— but he’s beginning to understand not from arousal. In fact Nathan is still soft, his cock not the urgent bulge in his jeans it should be if they’ve been kissing for a while.

‘I don’t want to strangle you!’ he bleats out. ‘I don’t want to hurt you, use you. You’re not even hard—’

‘That’s alright!’ Nathan rushes to say, ‘I really don’t mind. Just, whatever you want to do—’

‘I _love_ you!’ escapes without thought, tears welling up in his own eyes. What is this? ‘I want to hold you, treasure you— never hurt you Nathan, _never._ ’ 

Then Nathan bursts into tears, immediately flopping over and hiding his face against the bed. After a while he can make out some of what his boyfriend is babbling, things like ‘horrible to you’ and ‘called you a melonfucker’ and ‘should be angry with me’ and ‘let a girl kiss me even though I’m _yours_ ’ and, of all glorious things, ‘ _love you so much._ ’

At that he drags Nathan upright and into his arms, even though Nathan struggles a bit and wails about looking like a twat. They don’t fuck, but they do cuddle, trading kisses and soft words, his heart feeling like it’s fit to bursting. All the darkness washed out of him by the light of that revelation. Nathan loves him. 

_Nathan loves him._


End file.
